Chapter 4. Stage "Dreams"
I know more than two people are reading this, so where are the reviews? I will personally reply to anyone else who reviews, and mention you in these author notes! So what are you waiting for? And if I've inspired any Dune readers, please tell me! I know the reason I took my parents' suggestion that I should read Dune was because I watched theChildren of Dune miniseries on DVD with them and hardly understood any of it. So does that mean I'm ruining your curiosity by not cutting out as much as I should?
selle18: Thanks for sending another review. We do need some way to reach out to all Dune/Naruto fans! BEWARE THE MONSTERS OF THE SAND! (That's Shukaku and Shai-Hulud. Funny how they start with the same "sh" sound...)
Hannah/KazeKage Shad: You're right: Darts equals Love! (At least that's what we'll tell Itachi and Orochimaru...) You know, some people would say Pink equals Love, too...;)
Everyone who liked my purposeful typos in the last chapter: Two days after that chapter was published, I got a fortune cookie that said "You life will be happy and peaceful." Go figure.
Vacation week is turning out busier than I expected, so I have to balance my writing with the rest of my "happy and peaceful" life.
On with the story!
So far, Sasuke's search was unsuccessful, since the enemies of Konoha were being kept in a different part of the building so that no Jutsus would be used and no shurikens, kunais, or darts would be thrown, at least until the play was over. The avenger couldn't wait 'til then, so he decided to seek out the director, in the hopes that she could be made to reveal Itachi's location. (A/N: Fat chance! I just said I didn't want any blood spilled backstage, remember?) (Sorry, that was my inner talking.)
He proceeded to enlist the help of the first person he encountered while running down the strangely deserted halls. This happened to be Kiba.
Acting calm as always, Sasuke simply ordered, "Kiba, help me find the director."
"Fine," replied the startled boy with a small, equally startled dog peeking out of his coat. "But with so many people rushing around, how do I know which one is the director?"
Sasuke answered impatiently, "She's the one whose Konoha headband is obviously fake!"
"Hey!" said Julia, appearing behind him. She was in fact wearing the described headband, pushed back from her forehead the way Sakura always wore hers. "I'll have you know I made this myself and I'm proud of it!" (A/N: Yes, I can tell when one of the actors insults my headband. Just go along with it!)
"Hey, you're right! A fake headband!" exclaimed Kiba. After being glared at by the girl who, after all, was in charge of the whole fanfic, he continued, "You know, that's the best counterfeit ninja headband I've ever seen!" (Which was technically true, it being the only counterfeit headband he'd ever seen.) "Is it duct tape?"
"No," answered the annoyed fashion guru (who had already been asked this question more times than she could count), "it's metallic posterboard. I penciled on the symbol and went over it with a Sharpie. And no, Sasuke, I'm not going to tell you where Itachi is."
"How do you know about that?" asked Sasuke, who had been caught off guard by her perceptiveness.
"I'm the one who just typed it up." She abruptly changed the subject. "Sasuke, your scene is coming up. Aren't you supposed to be getting ready?"
A/N: It appears that I am now doing these to mark scene breaks. As for that last scene: I will quote one of my friends: "Randomness is the spice of life." Kitty, if you're reading this, know that I DID make you a headband over vacation. It's a Sound one, to match Anna's, but with a different color band. You can tell the rest of the Anime Club that I'm taking orders for them. Almost as good as the real thing, and a lot cheaper! We can even keep Hannah from hogging all the Sand ones! Anyway... Back to the story!
Meanwhile, on stage...
The Caladan scenery was back, and so were Temari and TenTen. The dark-haired girl spoke first. "Well, Jessica, what have you to say for yourself?"
"So I had a son!" snapped Temari.
"You were told to bear only daughters to the Atreides."
"It meant so much to him."
"And you in your pride thought you could produce the Kwisatz Haderach!"
"I sensed the possibility."
"You thought only of your Duke's desire for a son. An Atreides daughter could have been wed to a Harkonnen heir and sealed the breach. We may lose both bloodlines now."
A dramatic silence reigned until TenTen turned away, saying, "What's done is done. Now summon the boy."
Temari did so, and Naruto entered.
"Young man, let's return to this dream business," said TenTen.
"What do you want?" asked Naruto.
"Do you dream every night?"
"Not dreams worth remembering. I can remember every dream, but some are worth remembering and some aren't."
"How do you know the difference?"
"I just know it."
TenTen looked thoughtful, then asked, "What did you dream last night? Was it worth remembering?"
"Yes." He closed his eyes, and a semitransparent curtain (A/N: It's called a scrim, by the way.) was lowered from above, separating the stage into two parts. Mysterious-sounding music began playing, and the lighting dropped to an almost nonexistent level, except for the wriggling patterns of light that reflect off of water, which were projected onto the rear wall. Then, a single spotlight came on and focused on upstage center. (A/N: For those of you who've never learned stage blocking, a phrase which here means "A fancy way of telling an actor where they're supposed to stand,"(No, I don't own A Series Of Unfortunate Events either, so don't even think about suing!) "Upstage" means "to the back of the stage, farther away from the audience." "Downstage," therefore, is the area of the stage closer to the audience. And for future reference, "stage right" and "stage left" are from the actor's point of view.) There stood Hinata, her signature blush creeping across her face as she felt the eyes of the whole audience rest on her.
Naruto continued, "I dreamed a cavern... and water... and a girl there--very skinny with big eyes. Her eyes are all blue, no whites in them. I talk to her and tell her about you, about seeing the Reverend Mother on Caladan."
Still in the dark, TenTen asked, "And the thing you tell this strange girl about seeing me, did it happen today?"
A pause followed, then Naruto spoke again. "Yes. I tell the girl you came and put a stamp of strangeness on me."
"Stamp of strangeness..." She trailed off. "Tell me truly, now, Paul, do you often have dreams of things that happen afterward exactly as you dreamed them?"
"Yes. And I've dreamed about that girl before."
"Oh? You know her?"
"I will know her."
"Tell me about her."
"We're in a little place in some rocks where it's sheltered. It's almost night, but it's hot and I can see patches of sand out of an opening in the rocks. We're... waiting for something... for me to go meet some people. And she's frightened but trying to hide it from me, and I'm excited. And she says..." He paused, because that was the cue for Hinata's only line in this scene.
Hinata did her best to rise to the occasion. She tried not to stutter as she recited her line, but trying to control her voice only made her more tense. "T-Tell me about the w-waters of your homeworld, Usul."
The lights snapped back on over the front part of the stage, drawing attention away from the rising scrim and Hinata's exit. Naruto immediately picked up his monologue again. "Isn't that strange? My homeworld's Caladan. I've never even heard of a planet called Usul..." A long pause followed. "But maybe she was calling me Usul. I just thought of that. She asks me to tell her about the waters. And I tell her a poem, but I have to explain some of the words--like beach and surf and seaweed and seagulls."
"Young man," said TenTen, "as a Proctor of the Bene Gesserit, I seek the Kwisatz Haderach, the male who truly can become one of us. Your mother sees this possibility in you, but she sees with the eyes of a mother. Possibility I see, too, but no more." She then turned to Temari, who had been watching the whole thing. "You've been training him in the Way--I've seen the signs of it. I'd have done the same in your shoes and devil take the Rules." Then she spoke to Naruto again. "Goodbye, young human. I hope you make it. But if you don't--well, we shall yet succeed."
A/N: Another scene break. I might as well include another random thought. This morning I was thinking about casting Shino as Count Fenring. He definitely seems very imposing and mysterious. The coat, the ever-present sunglasses... Then I had a revelation about the sunglasses! Anybody else watch the show Strange Days at Blake Holsey High? Remember the "Pheremones" episode? It had a conversation that went like this:
Josie: Are sunglasses...the new "thing"?
Girl: What sunglasses?
And it turned out sunglasses were just one way that people were acting weird. And then it was discovered that their strange behavior was because they were turning into part-humans-part-bees, which are BUGS! And it was suggested that the sunglasses were to hide the fact that they were developing compound eyes. Does any of this have anything to do with Shino and his sunglasses-wearing habits? I don't know. But maybe we should spray him with licorice-root tea and see what happens? Does anyone have any allergy medication?
Sadly, the authoress had imposed a deadline of one chapter a week on herself. Missing it wouldn't have been such a big deal, especially with the knowledge that she had spent some of her writing time on another project, but Rock Lee had offered to let her run laps around Konoha with him if she missed the self-imposed deadline. This turned out to be very helpful, as, thanks to her gym class, she was morally opposed to running laps, especially with Youth-inspired kids in spandex. But to avoid this fate, she sadly was forced to not write in the scene with Paul and Thufir Hawat (who just happened to be played by Gai). (A/N: Please don't use the idea of Mentats played by Youth-obsessed guys in spandex as evidence of my insanity. Use the above babble about Shino and Blake Holsey High instead. Incidentally, I suspect L from Death Note of being a Mentat.) Instead, she skipped directly to the entrance of Gurney Halleck.
"So you don't even have a good morning for me, you young imp."
"Well, Iruka-sensei, I mean Gurney, do we come prepared for music when it's fighting time?" recited Naruto, almost flawlessly. Almost being the key word. Needless to say, he was somewhat distracted by the presence of his old Ninja Academy teacher on the stage.
"So it's sass for our elders today," said Iruka as he set up a strange stringed instrument, which it would turn out was called a baliset.
"Isn't Duncan Idaho supposed to be teaching me weaponry?"
"He's gone to lead the second wave onto Arrakis. All you have left is poor Gurney, who's spoiling for music. And it was decided in council that you being such a poor fighter we'd best teach you the music trade so you wouldn't waste your life entirely."
"Maybe you'd better sing me a lay then. I want to be sure how not to do it."
A/N: Lee: Well, it's midnight, so you were supposed to finish yesterday. I was too tired to go on after only 459 pushups. Let's get started on those laps! Julia: (grabs Sakura and waves her in front of Lee) Toro, Toro! Wait, that means "bull". Ummm... El Menor Monstre Verde! Lee: Unhand her! My precious Sakura! Julia: RUN! (Julia and Sakura end up running the equivalent of several laps around Konoha in order to escape Lee)
(Back to the main story) Iruka laughed and started playing the baliset and singing. Whaddya know, he had a really good voice. His fan club began squealing and/or fainting in delight. (He must have a fan club somewhere. It wouldn't be fair for everyone else to have one and not him, right?) Only problem was, the song would probably have suited Jiraiya better.
Oh-h-h, the Galacian girls
Will do it for pearls,
And the Arrakeen for water!
But if you desire dames
Like consuming flames,
Try a Caladanin daughter!
But then, right when Julia thought she was having success keeping her friends out of her fic, Anna and Kitty, two of her friends who happened to believe that they were vampires, chose that moment to run across the stage. They were still carrying the huge mallets they had used to beat up a guy named Pat on episode 3 of the Insanity Talk Show, and were still hopped up on the Red Bull they had had to celebrate that event. In the process of running across the stage, they stopped to look at Iruka.
"Hammer time!" they shouted joyfully as the mallets went to work on another unfortunate randomly selected victim.
5 minutes later, after the duo had run out the exit, probably in search of more Red Bull, Malia, being the strongest of Julia's friends, picked the unconscious Iruka off the floor. She looked down at him uncertainly, then looked out to the audience. She called out, "Anyone want to buy a slightly beaten-up Chuunin?" Several audience members showed interest. "Can I hear fifty dollars?"
"Fifty dollars!" shouted a random girl.
"Sixty!" yelled another random girl, who we shall call "Random Girl #2".
"Seventy-five!" That was a third random girl, henceforth to be known as "Random Girl #3".
A while later... "Sold! To Random Girl #2,563 for fifty million dollars and taking the whole Pollard Middle School Anime Club to Ichiraku Ramen(which would probably be even more expensive, trust me)!"
Then Julia finally showed up. "Malia, what are you doing?"
"We're going to Ichiraku!"
"Oh, good! But... No, Malia, we can't do this! It's breaking the rules! No auctioning off the actors, at least until the show is over!"
"That's not a rule."
"Well I'm making it a rule now! No auctioning off the actors! By the way, he should have woken up by now. Call Assistant Director Tsunade!"
Tsunade immediately appeared and bent to examine Iruka. She lifted her head and asked, "Has he been attacked by teenage vampires drinking Red Bull and wielding mallets recently?"
"How do you know about that?" asked the would-be auctioneer.
"Diagnosis is an important thing for a medic-nin to learn," replied Tsunade, as she summoned a medic team to take Iruka away. The Fifth herself had to stay on stage to deal with the angry fangirl who had just been deprived of her beloved ninja teacher, yet had managed to keep her ridiculous sums of money.
"Too bad," remarked Julia. "I really did want to include Paul and Gurney's swordfight practice scene. I guess they'll just have to read the book. Or become Girl Scouts(inside joke)."
A/N: And I'm done at last. Tomorrow is Monday. Oh joy. That just goes to show what I am willing to give for my readers: Namely, my sleep. You're welcome. (Sorry if that came out sounding sarcastic. What can you expect, this time of night?)